Our Team

David Gernert

David is the President and Founder of The Gernert Company. He spent the first fourteen years of his publishing career at Doubleday, the last six as Editor-In-Chief. He left Doubleday in 1996 to start The Gernert Company, believing his experience as a publisher would give him some unique insight into the representation of authors. He lives in Pound Ridge with his wife and four children.

sarah bolling

Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Sarah joined The Gernert Company in 2017 after working in editorial at Norton. She’s looking to represent fiction blending literary ambition with genre sensibility, especially featuring diverse characters, far-flung locales, or inventive narrative structure. Her taste also includes a range of nonfiction, including memoir, pop culture, psychology, sociology, and style. Sarah majored in East Asian Studies at Brown University, and holds an MA in Comparative Literature from Goldsmiths, University of London. She lives in Manhattan.

Sarah Burnes

Sarah began her career on the editorial side of publishing, first at Houghton Mifflin, then in the Knopf Group, and last at Little, Brown. She became an agent in 2001, joining The Gernert Company in 2005. As an editor, she acquired and edited literary fiction and non-fiction, and as an agent, she has added children's fiction to her list. Sarah sits on the board of non-profit progressive publisher the New Press and her writing has appeared on The Paris Review's blog. She lives with her husband and three children in Brooklyn.

Stephanie Cabot

Half French, half American, Stephanie was educated in Europe and in the US where she majored in History at Harvard. Her agenting career began in London and she spent nine years at William Morris - London, the last five as Managing Director, where she built a list of international, bestselling and prize-winning authors. She moved back to the States in 2005 with her husband and four children, joined The Gernert Company, and is now selectively adding writers from a variety of genres, including crime/thrillers, commercial and literary fiction, latte lit, and non-fiction. She is especially interested in writers who tell original stories with strong narratives and distinctive characters. She divides her time between New York and New England.

Ellen Coughtrey

A Hampton Roads, VA native, Ellen joined The Gernert Company in 2013. After graduating from Davidson College and working for a year at a private school in Greece, she landed in New York without a plan and serendipitously found her way into publishing. Her reading taste includes women's literary and commercial fiction, historical fiction, narrative nonfiction and smart, original thrillers. She also admits a soft spot for well-written southern gothic anything. She lives in Harlem.

julia eagleton

A native of London, Julia has also lived in Tuscany, Copenhagen and Cape Town, which speaks to her taste for international literature and passion for culture. She is looking to represent poetry and literary fiction, especially featuring atypical narrative structure, unheard voices, boundary-crossing perspectives, and humorous undertones. Her non-fiction categories of interest include politics and current affairs, science, nature, and memoir. Julia has an MA in both Psychology and Finance, from the University of Edinburgh and the London School of Economics respectively, and is a graduate of the Faber Academy novel writing course. She lives in Brooklyn.

Seth Fishman

Seth joined The Gernert Company in 2010 after beginning his career as an agent at Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. Born in Midland, Texas, he graduated from Princeton University and earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. His interests are wide-ranging, but in particular he's looking for the new voice, the original idea, the entirely breathtaking creative angle in both fiction and nonfiction. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son, and is the author of two books of YA fiction and three forthcoming picture books.

Rebecca Gardner

Rebecca is a Vice President and the Rights Director of The Gernert Company, which she joined in 2009. She spent four years at Penguin Random House, Inc., first as the Director of Foreign Rights for The Doubleday Publishing Group, and then as Vice President & Director of Subsidiary Rights for The Random House Publishing Group. She has worked for BBC Books and for Maria B. Campbell Associates, where she scouted books for foreign publishers and film. Rebecca takes a boat to work and lives with her husband on the Jersey Shore. She is not open to queries.

Courtney Gatewood

Courtney joined The Gernert Company's Foreign Rights team in 2006 after several years at Maria B. Campbell Associates, where she scouted US books for foreign publishers and film. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children. Courtney works exclusively on translation rights and is not open to queries.

Jack Gernert

Jack is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where he double majored in Economics and American Studies with a focus on popular culture. A former intern, Jack spent time chasing snow drifts and sunshine as a ski bum in Utah and an events coordinator in Miami before joining The Gernert Company full time in 2016. He loves stories about heroes -- both real and imagined -- and is often hooked by writing with a sense of humor or an unforgettable narrator.

Alia hanna habib

Alia started her publishing career as a publicist at HMH, working first on cookbooks and then on narrative nonfiction and literary fiction. She became an agent at McCormick Literary in 2011 and joined Gernert in 2017. Her tastes include narrative nonfiction, literary fiction and culinary titles. Alia grew up in Pennsylvania, graduated from Barnard College and earned an MA in English Literature with a concentration in the nineteenth-century novel from Rutgers. She serves on the Board of Housing Works and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their border collie.

Chris Parris-Lamb

Chris is a Vice President and literary agent at The Gernert Company, which he joined in 2005. He was born in Alabama and grew up in North Carolina, where he attended UNC-Chapel Hill on a Morehead-Cain Scholarship. His nonfiction tastes encompass a wide variety of genres and subjects, and his fiction tastes incline toward the literary; in both categories he’s looking for great writing by smart writers, and prefers queries to be accompanied by a sample chapter or two. He sits on the Board of n+1, and lives with his wife and pit bull in Brooklyn.

Will Roberts

Will is a literary agent who also manages foreign rights at The Gernert Company. He joined the team in 2008 after working at Vintage Books, and, before that, at a newspaper in Jackson, WY, covering the courts and police department. A graduate of Middlebury College, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife. He is looking for suspense novels, both literary and commercial, that are original, unpredictable and authentic, drawn from unique backgrounds.

Erika Storella

Erika is the Director of Operations and a literary agent at The Gernert Company. She joined in 2005 after completing a MA in social science at the University of Chicago. Her graduate work sparked an interest in how new ideas are brought to the public and led her to pursue a career in publishing. Originally from Boston, she now resides in Brooklyn with her husband and son and is looking for nonfiction projects that make an argument, narrate a history, and/or provide a new perspective.

Anna Worrall

Anna is the Director of Marketing and Social Media and a literary agent at The Gernert Company, which she joined in 2010. After graduating from NYU with a degree in history, she worked in the marketing department at an academic publisher in her native Philadelphia before moving to Hungary, where she taught conversational English and traveled extensively. She's looking to represent smart women’s literary and commercial fiction, psychological thrillers, and narrative nonfiction, as well as cooking and lifestyle books. She also handles audio rights for the agency. Anna lives with her husband in Brooklyn. Anna will be closed to queries from October 15, 2018 - March 1, 2019.